Love and Peaches by Jodi Lynn Anderson Page B

After that, you’ll be on your own with the ponies.”
    It was Leeda’s turn to be unruffled. “My plan is to move thempretty fast. I shouldn’t need you more than a couple of weeks at the most.” On her way here, she had worried about telling him this because she knew she was taking work away from him. But now, it felt satisfying.
    Grey laughed.
    Leeda brushed her hair from her eyes, annoyed. “What?”
    â€œYou’ll be lucky if you can get rid of them by the end of the summer.” He grinned as if he were about to reveal something shocking. And then, he did. “Your grandmom was trying to find homes for them for years.”
    Â 
    Leeda ignored the Chihuahua, who was straining at her and whining, as she passed him on her way into the house. She closed the door with a creak and stared into the dimness.
    Eugenie’s front parlor had always been like a room in a museum—clean, orderly, and perfect. Leeda had once, as a kid, spilled a pitcher of sweet tea on the couch, and she had thought her grandmom was going to keel over from the shock of it. True to her southern roots, she had literally swooned. But now that Eugenie was gone, the room felt even more stifling than it had before. There were two uncomfortable brocade couches, a piano against the far wall, two tiny side tables, and a large buffet pinning down the room, covered in white doilies that were slowly turning yellow. Everything was coated in a fine layer of dust.
    Leeda was reminded of long afternoons she’d spent with her grandmother here—sometimes on a visit with her mom and sometimes when her mom had sent her alone. It had always felt like there was an absence of air. But Eugenie had seemed to like it that way.
    Now Leeda opened the curtains, sending a cloud of dust flying around her, and glanced out the window toward the barn lot where Grey was pouring a huge bucket of water into one of the troughs. At least he was strong. Leeda couldn’t see pouring bucketfuls of water with her spindly little arms.
    With a sudden urge to call Eric, she went into the green linoleum–floored kitchen and picked up the phone, placing it to her ear, but there was no dial tone. She sighed, frustrated. She probably would have to get the line reconnected. What if it was as hard to get rid of the ponies as Grey had said? What if she ended up stuck at Primrose Cottage all summer? She walked back out of the kitchen again and up the carpeted stairs to her grandmom’s bedroom, where Eugenie had always kept an olive green rotary phone. Maybe it was working.
    Leeda pushed the bedroom door open and tiptoed across the carpet as if she might wake someone. She picked up the phone on the bedside table but it too was dead. Leeda sank onto the bed with a creak and looked around the room, pointlessly annoyed at her grandmom. The room still smelled like her powdery perfume. Her clothes still hung in the closet, the door of which stood open. It was as though she had just stepped out for the afternoon.
    An old pocket calendar from 1984 sat on the nightstand. Leeda stared at it for a moment and then, acting on impulse, she tucked it into her purse. She had done something similar at the orchard the other day while Birdie was building her tree house. She’d found a half of a crayon tucked into the corner of the living room, and had pocketed it when no one was looking. She didn’t know why she’d done it. But, she reasoned, she wasn’t hurting anyone.
    Leeda swung her legs against the bed frame, but something pricked her right in her calf. She bent to see what it was, lifting up the thin white bed skirt. It was an envelope, maybe a letter. Probably from President Reagan , Leeda thought drily. She tugged it out of its spot and studied it.
    It was yellowed, and it had no address or postmark, only Eugenie’s name. On the back, where the seal met in a triangle, someone had drawn a little heart. It was a love letter.
    Leeda felt